Cooper murder trial -- Possible tampering with computer evidence

[unc70]

Many of you may know about the trial in Wake County of Cary resident Brad Cooper for the murder of his wife Nancy Cooper. He claims she went jogging on a Saturday morning and never came back. Her nearly nude body was found several days later in a drainage ditch several miles away. Police immediately claim it was severe case of domestic violence, that he killed her, and faked his alibit (a phone call from the home phone while he was at Harris Teeter). Another abusive husband kills his wife. Give custody of their kids to her family. Her friends start charity in her name to fight abuse, etc. Throw him in jail. He obviously did it. Case closed!

Well maybe not so closed. Now after 2.5 years in jail, the trial is well underway, 30+ days and counting only 3 by the defense. Almost no forensic data to substantiate the prosecution's case, it even requires extra assumptions to make it work (e.g. she must have vomited, leading to so little undigested food remaining). No evidence he had ever abused her; likely a claim for a possible divorce. The police had accidentally erased her cell phone while trying to access it, then failed to notify defense for many months. Lots of foot dragging by police and DA for Brady disclosures. The dramatic key evidence of premeditated murder: FBI found files on his computer showing he had done a Google Maps search the day before for the location the body was found.

Since almost all the trial documents and testimony are online at wral.com, many people have been watching this trial locally and in Canada where the Coopers are from. The defense computer expert was greatly restricted in what he could discuss because of a strange ruling by the judge barring him from talking about the FBI evidence because he was not a forensic expert. Still got most of the evidence in. It is now looking very likely that there was tampering with the computer evidence and that the Google search is bogus. No idea if the jury is able to follow the technical evidence. Next week should be interesting.

The FBI testimony was blacked out but was in open court. The best reporting of it is this weekend's thread at WebSleuths.com. I am part of discussions there and at wral.com under unc70. The news reports at wral.com have been very one-sided favoring the prosecution, the headlines even more so; suspicious since one of their reporters, Amanda Lamb, already has a book to appear this fall.

No idea if Brad Cooper is guilty or not. Don't know anyone involved. Want to see a fair and open trial. Too many things wrong with this trial so far. Glad to help anyone trying to get up to speed on this case.

[barbtries]

1. i am in the process of listening

to all of WRAL's taped proceedings. amazed at the weakness of the prosecution's case, as well as the way they drew it out over such a length of time with so much worthless testimony.

my son is in law school and i asked him to check it out and give me his thoughts.

99% of the time it will be the husband. still, the prosecution needs some actual evidence and i have seen little to none. it really looks to me as if the friends and the family of nancy cooper dragged the CPD along with them. and it is inexcusable in my opinion that the CPD has apparently been going after this one possible explanation without ever considering other possible explanations.

i too do not know if he killed her. but my reasonable doubt has really been raised by what i have seen so far. still on day 14. also have really been struck by the apparent bias of the judge toward the prosecution and noticed, along with others, that now that the prosecution has rested their pathetic case, i have to do a search to find a story about the trial on wral's web page.

thanks for posting, you are not the only person following this case.

[unc70]

3. Really is an interesting case, in many aspects

To really understand what is going on, you really need some background information. This document at wral.com is a pleading from this Feb which has a lot of background on suppressed evidence, her affairs, failure to followup on other witnesses, withholding of Brady evidence, ...

http://www.wral.com/asset/news/news_briefs/2011/02/17/9132146/coopermotion.PDF

Good luck catching up before the trial resumes on Monday. I will post the links to notes taken by someone at court the day the FBI Google Maps evidence was presented. There is no video of that section for security reasons. Interesting, later video shows the blacked-out witnesses observing the proceedings. So much for that.

[barbtries]

5. i have the pdf on my desktop

and have read a lot of it already. thanks

[barbtries]

2. can i get the link

to the thread at websleuths? i am having trouble navigating the site and haven't found the thread. thank you

[unc70]

4. Websleuths coverage of Cooper trial

This is the current thread for this long weekend. Already over 800 posts since yesterday morning. A bunch of recent topics are being rehashed while court is in recess. The previous thread is pretty good, too.

http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134123